Saturday, August 4. 2007

Scientists worked Saturday to trace the source of a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak on an English farm, a development that prompted the European Union to ban livestock imports from Britain, an official said.

In 2001, foot and mouth disease devastated Britain's meat industries and I'm sure everyone there is setting on pins and needles waiting to see what is going to happen now. In a way this is like the recent brucellosis problem in Montana. It is a disease there is a vaccine for and the critters get over it. Why slaughter all of them? I sometimes don't understand these things.

In all reality, foot and mouth disease and what happened in Britain in 2001 is what is really driving any NAIS plan. It scared a lot of farmers and ranchers and they figured they needed a way to track animal movements. The problem I see is that they never established in Britain that is was animal movement that caused all the problems. Anecdotal evidence indicates that foot and mouth disease was spread in Britain by the investigators themselves tracking it to other farms while investigating foot and mouth disease. It is so contagious that people, vehicles and wildlife can cause it to move from farm to farm.

At this point I can't say much about this outbreak. We need to watch and see what happens. It's one of those scenarios that frightens a cattle producer, like brucellosis, but there is not much you can do about it.

What is important is not what someone is but what he is waiting for. Not the events of life but its possibilities. Dorothee Solle